Milestones Aug. 5, 2002

DIED. CHAIM POTOK, 73, best-selling author of The Chosen and My Name Is Asher Lev, whose crystalline prose gave mainstream audiences a nuanced glimpse into the rarely seen world of religious Jews; of brain cancer; in Merion, Pa. Potok's novels repeatedly addressed the struggle between religious devotion and love for the secular world, a tension he experienced as the son of Orthodox Polish immigrants who deemed his work frivolous. Inspired by the writing of Evelyn Waugh and James Joyce, whom he read on the sly as a teenager, Potok, unlike religious skeptics Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, lovingly depicted the tight-knit, insular yet culturally rich community of the Orthodox and Hasidim.

PLEA ENTERED. By ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI, 34, who previously tried to plead guilty to conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks; of not guilty; in Alexandria, Va. Moussaoui changed his mind after the judge informed him the plea meant confessing to detailed involvement in the attacks, which he denies.

ARRESTED. JOHN RIGAS, 78, founder of bankrupt cable giant Adelphia Communications, and his sons TIMOTHY RIGAS, 46, and MICHAEL RIGAS, 48, former Adelphia executives; by federal agents; on fraud charges that include bilking the company out of hundreds of millions of dollars; in New York City.

APPOINTED. ROWAN WILLIAMS, 52, Welsh archbishop; as Britain's 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Anglican church; by Prime Minister Tony Blair; in London. Among issues on which he has spoken out: church marriages for divorced people and ordination of gays and women (he's for both); Western military intervention (he has warned against it); and The Simpsons ("one of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue").

AILING. SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, 60, former Yugoslav President on trial before a U.N. war tribunal for genocide during the Bosnian war; of severe heart disease and high blood pressure; in the Hague. Court-recommended treatment is expected to delay the trial.

UNDER INVESTIGATION. AOL TIME WARNER; by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC); over accounting practices. The SEC fact-finding inquiry, which the media giant (and TIME's parent) disclosed last week, is looking into whether its AOL division properly accounted for $270 million of revenue over the past two years. Both AOL and its auditors say the accounting was appropriate.

--DIED. PRINCE AHMED BIN SALMAN, 43, nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and a publishing and horse-racing magnate who owned War Emblem, this year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner; of a heart attack; in Riyadh. In a double blow to the royal family, Prince Sultan bin Faisal, 41, a cousin of Bin Salman's, was killed in a car crash on the way to the funeral.

DIED. WILLIAM PIERCE, 68, leading white supremacist ideologue best known for his 1978 racist novel The Turner Diaries, which imagines the violent overthrow of the Federal Government and was found among the possessions of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; of cancer; in Hillsboro, W.Va. Alarmed by the civil rights movement, the ex-physics professor co-founded the National Alliance, the largest neo-Nazi group in the country.